Marain grammar extension v0.4 — hypothetical, patientive, resultative, prospective, and poetic register

Status: adopted into this project’s dictionary as explicitly proposed language (2026-10-21). Neither the new irrealis suffix nor zero-marked predicate chaining is asserted to be part of Iain M. Banks’s published Marain. The original community-lesson evidence is preserved in the lesson-rule audit.

Recovered features retained

• Seven existing nominal cases (nominative, accusative, dative, originative, locative, comitative, bare vocative/absolutive) and four grammatical persons; nouns and pronouns continue to take their ordinary case endings.
• Predicates have no obligatory tense or person inflections in the surviving material. Existing optional time locatives include bechumli (past), ikili (present), and beyanli (future).
• hanggra is the Lesson 16 yes/no question marker. shay is used for who/what/which.
• hech (no/not/without) is attested after a verb, but the generalized scoping rule below is proposed.
• tcha (if), ayng (then), heth (believe), tsha (think about), uprahay (go/move), and nayla (away) are existing dictionary words.

1. Zero-marked predicates and optional ke

Proposal (superseding v0.1’s mandatory ke):

[subject.NOM] [modal or control predicate] (hech) [main predicate] (hech) [case-marked arguments]

A modal (ability, permission, advice, obligation) or control predicate (desire, need, intention) takes the following verb phrase as its complement without requiring another particle. The complement inherits the matrix subject when no new nominative is given. An explicit second nominative introduces a different subordinate actor:

• ra'yuh okehi uprahay nayla. — I want to leave (literally I want to go away).
• ra'yuh funuft uprahay nayla. — I can leave.
• ra'yuh shuhztnuft uprahay nayla. — I should leave.
• ra'yuh okehi geyuh uprahay nayla. — I want you to leave.

The existing proposed ke remains available optionally before the subordinate predicate where a boundary would otherwise be ambiguous. It is no longer the default equivalent of English “to”. These are new syntax rules, not observed lesson constructions.

The default display order of linked predicates is significant even though ordinary noun roles are marked by case. More complex nested clauses and freedom of argument order inside chains remain experimental.

2. Hypothetical / irrealis predicate suffix 'tcha

Proposal: attach 'tcha directly to the predicate whose action, capacity, or desire is hypothetical rather than asserted as actual.

Orthographic rule (revised Marain romanisation)

Before appending 'tcha, delete one final ending from the original predicate, checking the two-letter ending ch first, then c, p, d, t, or y. For any other ending, retain the complete stem. The rule is applied once per suffixation, not repeatedly to newly exposed letters.

Ending	Treatment	Example
ch	Drop ch	hech → he'tcha (illustrates spelling only; hech is not a predicate)
c	Drop c	No dictionary predicate currently ends in Roman c; retained for future vocabulary
p / d	Drop final letter	Rule defined; examples depend on eligible predicate stems
t	Drop t	funuft → funuf'tcha, nocht → noch'tcha
y	Drop y	uprahay → upraha'tcha
Other	Keep stem	okehi → okehi'tcha, heth → heth'tcha

The apostrophe is the standard romanised boundary notation, not an additional Marain glyph or spoken syllable. Because ay represents a glyph in revised romanisation, dropping final y in uprahay can change the underlying glyph sequence: uprahay is internally OprahA, while upraha'tcha is OprahaCa. The converter performs the transformation on romanised stems, then re-encodes the resulting glyph keys. This is intentional and should not be silently “corrected” to ordinary text concatenation.

The new predicate suffix is distinct from standalone tcha (“if”) and the previously proposed compound hangtcha (“counterfactual if”). Do not create a conflicting headword for the suffix.

Mood and scope examples

English	Proposed Marain
I leave	ra'yuh uprahay nayla.
I would leave	ra'yuh upraha'tcha nayla.
I can leave	ra'yuh funuft uprahay nayla.
I could leave	ra'yuh funuf'tcha uprahay nayla.
I want to leave	ra'yuh okehi uprahay nayla.
I would like to leave	ra'yuh okehi'tcha uprahay nayla.
I want to leave in hypothetical circumstances	ra'yuh okehi upraha'tcha nayla.

When 'tcha marks okehi, the expression can conventionally soften a request or desire (“would like”). Hypothetical mood does not automatically mean politeness elsewhere.

3. Negation scope in predicate chains

New generalization: place hech directly after the predicate that is negated.

• ra'yuh ku'ha hech uprahay nayla. — I do not need to leave.
• ra'yuh kwemraku'ha uprahay hech nayla. — I must not leave.
• ra'yuh funuft hech uprahay nayla. — I cannot leave.

The distinction between negating the controlling predicate and negating the embedded action is part of the extension, not fully documented in the lessons.

4. Opinion predicates governing propositions

Use heth, “believe,” for English I think [proposition]; tsha means think about/consider an object.

Under the proposed rule, a second nominative following a belief predicate starts the proposition the speaker believes:

• ra'yuh heth geyuh shuhztnuft uprahay nayla. — I think you should leave.
• ra'yuh heth'tcha geyuh shuhztnuft uprahay nayla. — I would think you should leave.

The hypothetically qualified belief is not the same as hypothetically qualified departure. Do not add an English “that” equivalent unless needed for clarity. This construction is intentionally narrower than general unrestricted embedding.

5. Lexicon provenance and unresolved distinctions

The prior v0.1 entries remain marked proposed-extension: ke (now optional), funuft (ability), gihwinuft (permission), shuhztnuft (advisability), kwemraku'ha (binding obligation), wolugnuft (intention), and hangtcha (counterfactual conditional). anong gains a proposed clause-wide possibility interpretation. Existing roots okehi, ku'ha, heth, and tsha are retained.

General if/then clauses, perfect/progressive aspect, polyclausal negation, unrestricted fronting, and fine-grained politeness remain open questions. The phrase assistant demonstrates only covered patterns and preserves unknown phrases as <??>, without claiming all nested clauses are solved.

Validation: run node --test tests/marain-phrases.test.cjs. The grammar is proposed; the tests check implementation consistency, not historical authenticity.

6. Extension v0.3: patientive, resultative, and prospective

Status: adopted for the project as a community proposal on 2026-10-21, not recovered Banks or community-lesson canon. All rules in sections 1–5 above remain unless explicitly superseded here. The seven nominal cases from the original lessons are unchanged. This extension adds an eighth nominal case and two distinct predicate markers.

Patientive (PAT): nominal case -vuh

Add the case-sensitive internal suffix vu (romanised vuh) to a noun or pronoun normally capable of serving as an affected argument. The patientive-marked argument is the grammatical subject undergoing the event, with the actor absent or unspecified. The verb remains in its ordinary form. Do not mark the patientive argument accusative as well. This passive-like construction is only proposed for verbs with identifiable undergoers.

Active and patientive	Meaning
ra'yuh tova tshainsle bechumli.	I imagined it in the past (active; to-va is the object)
tovuh tshainsle bechumli.	It was imagined (patientive; actor unspecified)
tovuh tshainsle.	It is imagined (no obligatory tense marker)
tovuh tshainsle beyanli.	It will be imagined (future temporal locative)

For to “it,” nominative is toyuh, accusative tova, patientive tovuh. Other stems form patientive mechanically, for example pren → prenvuh. An explicit agent phrase is not yet standardized; do not silently reinterpret originative -sa as an agent case.

Resultative (RES): predicate suffix 'inayng

Mark the predicate of a consequent proposition with 'inayng (internal suffix EnAG, from in “because” and ayng “then”). The preceding clause supplies the cause or logical premise. The consequence is asserted by the speaker; the marker does not prove causality or temporal sequence and does not mean completed action.

[cause clause], [patient/actor] [consequent predicate]'inayng [arguments/time].

Example: ra'yuh okehi'tcha gralemih, tovuh tshainsle'inayng bechumli. — “I would like to know; therefore it was imagined.”

Here bechumli alone supplies past time. The alternative independent connective inayng can precede a consequent clause, but do not require both the connective and resultative suffix at once. The idiom makes a causal assertion; whether the assertion is sensible is a question of meaning, not morphology.

Prospective (PROS): predicate suffix 'wolug

Attach 'wolug (internal suffix wolOg, based on wolug “a plan”) to an action that is planned, scheduled, or intended but is not yet realized relative to its reference time. It does not entail that the action will happen or that anyone is obliged to perform it. The future locative beyanli is an independent temporal expression; a plan may also be described from a past reference point.

Marain	Interpretation
ra'yuh uprahay'wolug nayla.	I plan to leave
ra'yuh kwemraku'ha uprahay nayla beyanli.	I must leave in the future (obligation + future time, no implication of a plan)
ra'yuh kwemraku'ha uprahay'wolug nayla.	I am scheduled and obliged to leave (obligation + plan)
ra'yuh upraha'tcha nayla.	I would leave, conditional/hypothetical, not a stated plan

kwemraku'ha is the already-proposed obligation predicate. The added prospective marker scopes over the planned event (e.g. uprahay), not the necessity itself. A plan and obligation are two independently asserted properties.

Suffix spelling and stacking

Marker	Applies to	Morphophonology
-vuh	nominal argument	ordinary case suffix; no apostrophe required
'tcha	predicate	existing v0.2 truncation: delete one final ch, c, p, d, t, or y first
'inayng	predicate of consequence	preserve full stem
'wolug	predicate of planned action	preserve full stem

The apostrophe indicates an orthographic morpheme boundary, not an additional native Marain glyph. Thus uprahay'wolug displays with key OprahAwolOg, whereas upraha'tcha has key OprahaCa. Attaching multiple predicate suffixes to the same predicate, their order, and scope are deliberately left unresolved. A sentence may have different markers on different predicates, and a modal predicate may govern a prospective-marked event.

Proposed vocabulary supporting the example

These are new lexical proposals, not restored sources, each recorded in dict.js with status: proposed-extension and its derivation:

Romanised	Internal key	Derivation / meaning
gralemih	gralemi	gra (true) + lemih (sense) → know
tshainsle	tSaEnsle	tsha (consider) + insle (make) → imagine
inayng	EnAG	in (because) + ayng (then) → therefore; independent connective distinct from attached 'inayng

Implementation and limits

The phrase assistant supports a restricted set of English paraphrases for this extension (including “it was imagined,” “I plan to leave,” “I am scheduled and obliged to leave,” and the explicit comma + therefore example). It does not claim general passive, causative, modal-embedding, or aspect parsing; unsupported constructions remain partial. Tests check orthographic boundaries, patientive versus accusative, prospective versus necessity, resultative scope, and no regression in recovered examples.

7. Poetic register v0.4 — rhyme without changing ordinary grammar

Community proposal (2026-10-21), not recovered Banks or lesson canon. The existing case endings and predicate meanings remain unchanged. Poetry can use refrains, consonant correspondence, internal rhyme, and double-meaning words without requiring new grammar.

Optional prosodic conjugations

The two v0.3 predicate suffixes prospective 'wolug and resultative 'inayng optionally take -a (glyph a) or -i (glyph E) in the poetic register. These are sound variants of the same predicate meaning, not new tense/aspect/case values. The ordinary form remains valid in verse and prose.

Predicate	Ordinary	Poetic ending a	Poetic ending i
uprahay (go)	uprahay'wolug	uprahay'woluga	uprahay'wolugi
kabo (speak)	kabo'inayng	kabo'inaynga	kabo'inayngi

The surface glyph keys are OprahAwolOga, OprahAwolOgE, kaboEnAGa, and kaboEnAGE. The apostrophe is only a romanized morpheme boundary, not a glyph. These forms reverse to their existing stem + suffix without semantic loss. Do not conflate the prospective marker with necessity or the resultative with completed action.

Hypothetical 'tcha does not acquire cadence endings under v0.4; its one-time deletion before ch, c, p, d, t or y remains unchanged. The order of stacked predicate suffixes is not yet defined.

Gaelic-inspired initial consonant mutation

A narrowly scoped optional poetic register mutation may follow the existing adjective po (“small”). It applies to ordinary known dictionary headwords and changes their initial Marain glyph as follows: p→f, b→v, t→T (th), s→S (sh), k→H (ch). For example, po pren may be po fren, both intended to mean “small spaceship.”

This does not reproduce Gaelic lenition; it borrows the idea that a preceding word can trigger a predictable initial-consonant change. Normal prose remains po pren. The helper requires an explicit trigger, refuses a mutated form that would collide with an existing dictionary entry, and reverses only to a unique dictionary lemma in its trigger context. The mutated form is not inserted as a separate headword. The dictionary’s ordinary case and person rules are unaffected.

Poetic composition

Gaelic aicill, Welsh cynghanedd, Persian ghazal rhyme and refrain, Arabic sajʿ, and Japanese pivot words are inspirations for rhythmic and semantic play. These are not asserted to be historical Marain rules. gra (true/correct) might be repeated as an optional refrain. luh (flow, current, wind) already has a useful semantic pivot. Ordinary word order remains constrained by the v0.2/v0.3 parser in automated translations even though case can license alternate emphasis in manual verse.

Borrowings and translation provenance

Five proposed headwords are recorded with status: proposed-extension: lemihgra (test/verify, sense+true); gaflemih (read, word+sense); saynowetsiki (still/continuing, exist+after); hechrayspatsmaychrayti (roughly non-war/non-military, not a fully equivalent word for civilian); burach (mess/shambles, adapted from Scottish Gaelic bùrach).

The Gaelic-derived burach is not proof of an established translation for “That’s heavy messing.” The proposed Gaelic phrase ’S e trom-bhùrach a th’ ann gu dearbh has an interpretable structure but should not be treated as an authenticated idiom. Heavy messing can refer to serious interference, not merely disorder.

Culture ship-name translations are interpretive glosses; Just Testing and Just Read the Instructions still omit the nuance of just, and several names lose wordplay or tense distinctions. See detailed poetic-register rules.

Implementation: the translator exposes bounded opt-in poeticCadence, reversePoeticCadence, poeticMutate, and reversePoeticMutation helpers, with collision checks and tests. It does not automatically mutate ordinary English-to-Marain outputs.